BlueDot

This week we are focusing on the application side of technology, not just the theoretical aspects. This leads us to a discussion on BlueDot, a Software company that tracked the spread of novel corona virus much before the official alert of the same.

Blue dot, a Canadian company that was founded in 2013 is a software company that warns the outbreak spread of infectious diseases. Its mission is to create an early warning system that predicts and warn the outbreak of infectious diseases. This company had successfully predicted the outbreak of Zika virus around Florida in 2016 and also foreseen that the Ebola virus would leave West Africa in 2014.

BlueDot uses Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing techniques to study data from various sources that include demographic department, public health organizations, media and various other such sources. This helped them to track the spread of Novel coronavirus, nine days prior to the official warning alert of the World Health organization (WHO). Its predictions also include the warning of new epicentres – India and Brazil much before the number of cases escalated in these regions.

In addition to providing warning signals, the company also makes efforts to understand how the infection might disperse to different parts of the world. The company had a major role in identifying the cities that are highly connected to Wuhan, the epicenter of Covid-19, using Global airline ticketing data to anticipate where the infected individuals might travel.

One of the main advantages of relying on such advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is its ability of focusing on multiple entities at the same time .i.e., it is efficient enough to track more than one outbreaks that happens almost during the same time.  This would help to alert officials concerned to take the necessary steps that would help to curb the outbreak at the right time.